Goonhub
06-04-2022, 07:37 AM
Personally, I think that players are deserving of their privacy when it comes to ban appeals and admin actions taken against them. The alternative is having public appeals which A: can lead to embarrassment on the part of the player due to having to air out whatever happened that led to their ban (and thus they might end up not appealing), and B: can have players using their appeal as a soapbox to push whatever agenda they have - as is what happened multiple times. This is in addition to the fact that one of the admin guidelines for goonstation for as long as I've been apart of the community has been to discourage the revealing or discussing of players bans - a guideline that public ban appeals obviously break.
As far as I can tell, there are two primary reasons that give merit to public ban appeals. 1: They make things in regards to the administration staff more transparent. 2: They give examples of what NOT to do as a player on goonstation. In regards to the former, just from my perspective as someone who has been in the community for about 2 years now, I think that the admin team has been very transparent just in general. I feel like whether it's balance changes, rule amendments etc, the staff has always done a good job of explaining their reasoning behind things. Town Hall meetings also contribute greatly in transparency. In regards to the latter, I admittedly did read ban appeals every now and then for just that purpose. I think that's the only big thing that is *lost* on the switch from public to private, but in my opinion it's a sacrifice that had to be made in order to protect the privacy of players. I think it is far more important to afford people their privacy over shining a spotlight on their mistakes.
As far as I can tell, there are two primary reasons that give merit to public ban appeals. 1: They make things in regards to the administration staff more transparent. 2: They give examples of what NOT to do as a player on goonstation. In regards to the former, just from my perspective as someone who has been in the community for about 2 years now, I think that the admin team has been very transparent just in general. I feel like whether it's balance changes, rule amendments etc, the staff has always done a good job of explaining their reasoning behind things. Town Hall meetings also contribute greatly in transparency. In regards to the latter, I admittedly did read ban appeals every now and then for just that purpose. I think that's the only big thing that is *lost* on the switch from public to private, but in my opinion it's a sacrifice that had to be made in order to protect the privacy of players. I think it is far more important to afford people their privacy over shining a spotlight on their mistakes.